The 77th edition of the BAFTA Awards this Sunday gave its main awards to two films with an uncomfortable political message, two stories about the darkest side of the 20th century: the nuclear threat and the genocide of the Jewish people. Oppenheimer, the story of scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose contribution was instrumental in developing the atomic bomb and hastening the end of World War II, won the award for best film.
The film was the gala's big winner and won three other relevant awards. The one for best director for Christopher Nolan – his first BAFTA – and the one for best actor for the Irishman Cillian Murphy, who plays the tormented scientist. “Thank you for recognizing the potential of such a dark story,” said Nolan, who accepted the best picture award accompanied by his wife, the film’s producer Emma Thomas. And best supporting actor for Robert Downey Jr. and his masterful interpretation of Oppenheimer's rival, US Atomic Energy Commission member Lewis Strauss.
Nolan's film also won the award for best soundtrack.
More information
The Zone of Interest, the stunning story of the Nazi commander Rudolf Hoss in charge of the Auschwitz concentration camp, his family and the idyllic home they enjoy on the other side of the Wall, has achieved two of the most relevant BAFTAs: Best British Film – it is an English-Polish co-production – and best foreign language film. The few dialogues in a feature film that reflects with subtle intelligence the “banality of evil” with which the political theorist Hanna Arendt described the cruelty of the Nazis are in German.
JA Bayona's Snow Society also sought the award, but was unable to displace Jonathan Glazer's film based on the novel of the same name by Martin Amis.
Emma Stone with Idris Elba after winning Best Actress at BAFTA.ANDY RAIN (EFE)
Awards for actresses
Poor Creatures protagonist Emma Stone has won the BAFTA for Best Actress for her portrayal of Bella Baxter, an entertaining, iconoclastic recreation with a deeply feminist message of the Frankenstein myth. American Da'Vine Joy Randolph won the award for best supporting actress for her role in Those Who Remain.
Anatomy of a Fall, also one of the favorite films of this edition of the BAFTAs, won the award for best original screenplay, but its protagonist Sandra Hülser, also nominated for the role of Hoss's wife in The Zone of Interest, won none of the British Academy's coveted masks.
The gala, which took place at London's Royal Festival Hall on the south bank of the Thames, was attended by stars such as Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan; Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling – no luck for Barbie either – Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. or the President of the British Academy of Film and Television, the Prince of Wales, William of England. His wife Kate Middleton is still recovering after undergoing abdominal surgery in mid-January.
The BAFTA award for best documentary film went to 20 Days in Mariupol, directed by Mstislav Chernov, which chronicles the first days of that city's siege after Vladimir Putin's Russia set out to conquer Ukraine. “It’s not a documentary about us [el equipo que lo ha rodado] but about the people of Ukraine. The story of Mariupol is the symbol of everything that has happened so far, of struggle and faith [de los ucranios]said Chernov as he accepted the award.
The award for best animated film went to “The Boy and the Heron” by Hayao Miyazaki. The Academy has awarded Britain's Samantha Morton its honorary BAFTA.
Babelia
The literary news analyzed by the best critics in our weekly newsletter
GET IT